I hold the The Tricorn (1964 – 2001) in only fond regard. This was a place where, in chronological order, my parents met, I cut my graffiti teeth, I bought records, I nightclubbed, bought clothes, bought more records, learnt (kind of) to DJ and finally worked.

The complex provoked and continues to provoke extreme reactions. A sprawling Brutalist complex that contained a shopping centre, apartments, car park and even a nightclub, the Tricorn was designed by Rodney Gordon at the Owen Luder Partnership and was completed in 1964 to general acclaim. In 1967 it won the Civic Trust Award for its “exciting visual composition”, three years later it was voted Britain’s fourth ugliest building. Go figure.

The Tricorn, like many similar, system built concrete structures built at this time soon both fell out of favour, fashion and into disrepair. Before it’s demolition nobody lived in the apartments besides pigeons, the club had long shut down and most of the shops had long moved on. The place had been left pretty much to rot, becoming a foreboding mass of crumbling concrete, a blot on the landscape. Despite appeals for it’s regeneration these were drowned out by the majority and the sad and tatty Tricorn was finally put out of it’s misery to a spiteful fanfare in 2004.

Personally, I’m sad it was demolished and I’m certainly not alone. Before its demolition, hoardings were put up around the site and Portsmouth City Council invited the artist Jeanie Kerswell to create a public art project which would both decorate the hoardings and display Portsmouth residents’ memories of the Tricorn. ‘The Colour Happened On The Inside’ concept covered the boards with Marmite jars (a neat take on ‘you either love it or hate it’) with white labels to be used for handwritten recollections of the soon to be demolished building.

What followed was an emotive set of comments from people who, like me, had learned to love the complex despite it’s failings. Somehow,within it’s alleyways, arcades and damp, crumbling facades a community had built up. Whether it had happened in the way Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon had intended was besides the point. While the bigger shops like Argos and Virgin Megastore (why isn’t anything a ‘mega’ anything anymore?) moved out of the building, a network of independent traders did their thing in Charlottes Superstore; an indoor market which seemed to absorb the noisiness and chaos of the Charlotte Street market outside.

In my era Charlottes and The Tricorn was home to the independent clothes shops, One Legged Jockey and Rif Raf (which was run by Pete Voss, the eventual lead singer of Indie Dance mob Campag Velocet), Domino Records which sold half decent Hip Hop and House music, a pet shop (with an agressive parrot if I recall), the obligatory greasy spoon and the haven for misfits, miscreants and all round good people, Mondo Comics.

The whole place was a bit of a mecca, a slice of alternative culture rarely found in Portsmouth at this time. This was people making the most of what they had. It’s my understanding that these independent shops were able to flourish as the rents were so low due to the poor state of The Tricorn but it’s interesting how this thriving community formed from nothing much.

Town planners of the late 60s and 70s had tried and so often failed to ‘create’ communities by building housing estates with schools, shops and pubs bolted on. But communities don’t just happen by plonking a group of people into one purpose built set of buildings. They evolve, untidily and unpredictably. Perhaps this was part of the reason The Tricorn failed; at least in it’s intended purpose. Structurally of course, it suffered the same problems as other Brutalist style buildings of that era; the bare concrete soon deteriorated when exposed to the unforgiving weather of the South Coast and the buildings warren-like layout and barely negotiable alleyways and foreboding voids seem quite bizarre on reflection.

The Tricorn demolition finally started in 2001, accompanied by a jovial live radio broadcast and torrential rain. What stands in it’s place is a car park.

So, yeah, I’ve been getting back into mixing thanks to stumbling on to a couple of great blogs while looking for some random 90s House tunes.

Methods of Dance and Acid Ted have served me well over the last few days with some great stuff from when I thought I looked the business with a skinhead, leather waistcoat, Destroy trousers and Blundstone boots, doing my dodgiest dancing to the heavy and dark Progressive House tunes du jour.

‘Progressive’ was a term given to a genre of House music that developed over the early to mid 90s. I believe it was first used by Dom Phillips, the then editor of the hugely influential dance music magazine, Mixmag. Labels like Guerilla in the South and Limbo in the North featured music that was deep, dark, dubby and generally light on the vocals. These were tracks that really embraced the technology of the time and used it to create a more complex and driving sound. Leftfield featured large in the development of Progressive House and Neil Barnes’ and Paul Daley’s Punk/Reggae/Dub background had a big influence on it’s sound and feel. DJs like Billy Nasty, Justin Robertson and even fleetingly Andy Weatherall played the tracks that became a soundtrack to my life over two or three years.

Probably the peak of my Progressive House affair was on the dance floor of the Love Ranch, a legendary night run by Sean McLusky (who would go on to open the superclub Club UK in Wandsworth) at Maximus in Leicester Square. The club was seedy, dark and full of ne’er do wells. Right up mine and the girfriends alley. My abiding memory is a hastily painted banner draped across the wall behind a podium which read, simply: THIS IS WHERE IT’S FUCKING AT.

It didn’t take long for the breakdowns in the tunes to become longer, the beats more breaky and the production even glossier. DJs like Sasha and John Digweed took the sound to somewhere more cinematic with their Renaissance and later Northern Exposure mixes and eventually Progressive, in my mind disappeared up it’s own backside; for me, it was over. I believe that House really hit it’s peak in the mid 90s. The clubs had become bigger, the music cheesier, the drugs cheaper and nastier. Maybe I turned into a House snob? Maybe I just got old and jaded. I’d been around for the raves in Hampshire fields in 89; The Second Summer of Love and all that, hearing prototype Drum and Bass at Sterns in 1990, to what I considered ‘real’ House Music played by the legends like DJ Pierre and Todd Terry. Maybe I was spoiled.

Anyway, you’d do far worse than checking out this little mix by me and (also here) if you’re interested in hearing what Progressive House was. The mix was made on Traktor but I’ve tried to keep the FX to a minimum. Otherwise, anything on Guerilla will give an idea of the sound; there’s currently shedloads gone up on Spotify. The tune below is a real highlight from the label and the genre.

Yusaku Kamekura (1915-1997) was a pioneer of Japanese graphic designer whose work established Japans global reputation for the medium. Kamekura is one of those designers whose work I have admired and been vaguely familiar with, without actually knowing it’s author. I stumbled across his outstanding posters for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo while doing some research for a project that I’m hoping will get out of the starting blocks (pun intended); a rebrand of Sussex Athletics Association.

Kamekuras Tokyo 1964 posters stayed in tune with Japanese heritage while representing his modernist principles. Like the rest of his work, they are breathtakingly simple yet dynamic. Kamekura’s work is, to me, how graphic design should be. No tricks or unnecessary flashiness, solid colour, space for the visual elements to breath, elegance and efficiency. One of the greats.

So, I’m still on a Brutalist, Modernist, social housing tip these days. I’m currently reading Lynsey Hanley’s excellent Estates: An Intimate History, which recounts the authors time and experience on a council estate outside Birmingham. As well as a deeply personal reflection on the effects of living on a council estate it is a great potted history of social housing in Britain. It was from this book that I found the quote on the image above. It comes from the architect James Dunnet who, when talking about Ernő Goldfinger‘s much maligned Balfron Tower in East London described the building as inspiring ‘a delicate sense of terror’. As Hanley notes…’is living in a council flat supposed to be delicately terrifying?’.

I bought my first 7 inch vinyl single in HMV, Commercial Road, Portsmouth in 1981.

Ghost Town by The Specials on the legendary 2 Tone label reached the number 1 position in July of that year and was a song that held a mirror to the state of the nation.

Socially and economically, Thatcher’s Britain was on its way to breakdown. My personal memory of Portsmouth in the early 80s was of closed shops, litter blown streets and an undercurrent of violence. 1981 was a year of mass uneployment, race riots, hunger strikes and strangely, a Royal Wedding. Where I lived the music and the fashion of 2 Tone was enjoyed while the essential multicultural element was ignored. Despite the city being virtually all white, racism existed. The National Front were prominent in this period and I distinctly remember going to a school disco (I was 10) and seeing a line of slightly older kids shouting ‘Sieg Heil” and giving the Nazi salute at the end of the ‘der-de-der’ sax riff of The Piranhas – Tom Hark. Very odd and considering the cultural references of this song, even odder. The racial harmony point was certainly missed by the more meat-headed youth of my lovely city, some of whom would go on to enjoy their Saturdays as part of Portsmouth Football Club’s notorious 6.57 crew.

Ghost Town is a bizarre number one single in relation to others of the same year (Bucks Fizz! Shaking Stevens!) and goes to show how influential the group and the 2 Tone movement were. Lyrically, it expresses life in a nation blighted by the destruction of industry and mass unemployment and virtually predicted the violence that would break out in England that year. Shaky certainly wouldn’t have covered that sort of content. Musically, the track is inspired. Doom-laden reggae with jazzy keyboards, horns, an unhinged wail of a chorus and ghostly sound effects. Timeless. The B sides, though a little more low-key were nearly as good. Why? is the tale of a racist attack on band member Lynval Golding and Friday Night, Saturday Morning captures the meaninglessness of a night on the tiles and features one of my favourite lyrics from the mealoncholic Terry Hall: ‘Wish that I had lipstick on my shirt, Instead of piss stains on my shoes’. Nice.